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About this blog: I am a perpetually hungry twenty-something journalist, born and raised in Menlo Park and currently working at the Palo Alto Weekly as education and youth staff writer. I graduated from USC with a major in Spanish and a minor in jo... (More)

About this blog: I am a perpetually hungry twenty-something journalist, born and raised in Menlo Park and currently working at the Palo Alto Weekly as education and youth staff writer. I graduated from USC with a major in Spanish and a minor in journalism. Though my first love is journalism, food is a close second. I am constantly on the lookout for new restaurants to try, building an ever-expanding "to eat" list. As a journalist, I'm always trolling news sources and social media websites with an eye for local food news, from restaurant openings and closings to emerging food trends. When I was a teenager growing up in Menlo Park, I always drove up to the city on weekends with the singular purpose of finding a better meal than I could at home. But in the past year or so, the Peninsula's food culture has been totally transformed, with many new restaurants opening and a continuous stream of San Francisco restaurants coming south to open Peninsula outposts. Don't navigate this food boom hungry and alone! Feed me your tips on new chefs and eats and together we'll share them with the broader community. (Hide)

Aubree Arndt, who most recently cooked at Maverick in San Francisco (now indefinitely closed due to an October fire) and Penrose in Oakland (opened by a Chez Panisse alum in November), started chefing at the Castro Street eatery in early 2014. She did so at the prompting of Maverick co-owner Michael Pierce, who is also involved at Bierhaus on a consulting basis.

Aubree Arndt, now executive chef at Bierhaus in Mountain View. Courtesy of Bierhaus.

Arndt is half German, half Polish; a graduate of Le Cordon Bleu's Scottsdale, Ariz., campus and has cooking experience from Denver to San Francisco, making her a prime person to execute Finley's vision for his newly renamed restaurant.

"I've been brought up around that kind of food  a ton of sauerkraut, beets, pierogi, sausage  since I was a kid," she said. "So I've been in that type of food my whole life."

She said she's focusing most of her energy on new shareable plates (as Finley said was his hope in November) like a butcher platter for two to four people with local cured meats, beer ricotta pickled vegetables, pimento cheese, mustard, pretzel ($20); a cheddar bratwurst from San Francisco's 4505 Meats with braised red cabbage and celery root slaw ($9); potato pancakes with apple relish, gruyere cheese, dill sour cream and bacon ($9), among others.

She also recently added spatzle, a savory dumpling dish common in areas like southern Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Hungary, to the menu. Arndt's comes topped with shredded gruyere cheese, mustard greens and sautéed mushrooms ($8). This week, she threw down with pork belly, serving the meat with a fermented rutabaga and walnut puree, roasted Brussels sprouts and a rutabaga and Brussels sprout sauerkraut.

Arndt said she's been making her own 15-day-fermented, garlic-infused sauerkraut "from the moment (she) walked in," so there's plenty of that to be found on the revamped menu.

Plus, sauerkraut making runs in her family, the Michigan native said. One of her uncles lives on the same plot of land as other family members in Michigan and has a farm where they grow a lot of cabbage  and thus, make a lot of sauerkraut.

"They give it out for Christmas and stuff; they can it (and) do a ton of pickling," she said. "So I've been eating (my uncle's) recipe for a long time. I based mine off of it (and) kind of tweaked it."

Arndt said the Bierhaus team also plans to shorten its burger menu to "three to four amazing burgers that are our signatures." The rest of their energy will be devoted to the shareable appetizer section.

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